The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has rejected nine applications for Bitcoin ETF proposals. The SEC published three separate orders yesterday, highlighting the rejections from the three different applicants.

SEC Says No to Bitcoin ETF Proposals

This ruling is a blow to Bitcoin bulls who’d hoped the products would have provided a breakthrough for institutional adoption. Last night, the SEC published its rejection of two proposals from ProShares, two from GraniteShares, and five other products from Direxion.

The rejections come just one day ahead of the deadline stipulated for a pair of Bitcoin ETFs submitted by ProShares. Proshares was working with the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) ETF exchange NYSE Arca.

The SEC said the proposals did not do enough to show they were “designed to prevent fraudulent and manipulative acts and practices.” All applications denied were directly linked to Bitcoin futures contracts. The SEC said that none of the nine applications had enough information to show that the futures markets are of “significant size.”

>> SEC ETF Delay

“That failure is critical because, as explained below, the Exchange has failed to establish that other means to prevent fraudulent and manipulative acts and practices will be sufficient, and therefore surveillance-sharing with a regulated market of significant size related to bitcoin is necessary,” the SEC wrote.

In short, if the Bitcoin futures market is too small, the SEC fears it could be easily manipulated. Last December, the commodities trading venues CBOE and CME launched the first Bitcoin futures, but the daily trade volume still remains small.

This isn’t the first SEC Bitcoin ETF rejection though. In July, the US Olympian Winklevoss Twins, who own the crypto exchange Gemini, were denied their Bitcoin ETF proposal as well.

Crypto Down

Unsurprisingly, the crypto market has dropped since the SEC ruling. At press time, the total cryptocurrency market is sitting just over $200 billion. Bitcoin (BTC) is currently trading below the $6,500 mark, and Ethereum (ETH) is just below $375.

98% of the coins within the top 100 cryptocurrencies are seeing losses this morning.